TIME TO BE OPEN, COMRADE CORBYN
As file reveals Czech spy called Labour leader the ‘right man to give information’, PM says it’s ...
THERESA May last night urged Jeremy Corbyn to be open about his relations with a former Czech spy.
The mail can reveal today that the agent repeatedly told his bosses the Labour leader could be a useful source. Following their first meeting in Parliament in 1986, Jan Sarkocy wrote: ‘He seems to be the right person for fulfilling the task and giving information.’
In a later memo, the spy said mr Corbyn had ‘an active supply of information on British intelligence services’. yesterday’s intervention by the Prime minister increases the pressure on her opposite number to detail what contacts he might have had with eastern Bloc agents.
And the chairman of the Commons foreign affairs committee last night suggested it would consider demands to summon mr Corbyn to answer questions.
He vehemently insists that he did not know mr Sarkocy was a
spy and that he was never paid for information. As the furore intensified:
Mr Corbyn threatened legal action against a Tory MP who claimed he had sold secrets to Communist spies;
The BBC finally reported on the allegations;
Ken Livingstone, Mr Corbyn’s close ally, admitted he met several times a man who later turned out to be a KGB agent.
Mr Corbyn has faced pressure to give permission for the release of an alleged Stasi file it is claimed might be held on him. The Labour leader was granted access by East Germany to go behind the Iron Curtain in the 1970s, where he travelled with his then lover Diane Abbott.
Asked about the Stasi file, the Prime Minister said: ‘It’s for individual MPs to be accountable for their actions in the past. Where there are allegations of this sort, MPs should be prepared to be open and transparent.’
A Labour source said: ‘We are not aware of any Stasi file.’
Tory MPs yesterday called for the foreign affairs committee to launch a full inquiry into Mr Corbyn’s relations with Communist agents, including summoning Mr Sarkocy to provide evidence. In a letter to
committee chairman Tom Tugendhat, David Morris said MPs needed to look into the ‘serious and disturbing allegations’.
He wrote: ‘It has recently been widely reported that the leader of the Opposition fraternised with a Soviet Bloc Czech spymaster in the late 1980s.
‘Given that it is widely accepted the Czech intelligence service had a track record of successfully penetrating Parliament there are strong grounds to warrant further investigation of these reports.’
Mr Tugendhat last night said his committee would consider the request. He added: ‘ The Soviet Union and its proxies have been trying to undermine parliamentary democracy for generations. By their friends ye shall know them. This is a guy whose friends have always been people who wish ill to the United Kingdom. The UK like every other democratic and open state is always vulnerable to foreign attempts of interference.’
Mr Corbyn yesterday instructed solicitors to write to Tory party vice-chairman Ben Bradley warning he would face legal action unless he deleted a ‘libellous’ tweet about him.
Mr Bradley had posted on Twitter: ‘Corbyn sold British secrets to Communist spies.’ Last night the message was deleted. Meanwhile, security minister Ben Wallace compared Mr Corbyn to Kim Philby, the notorious British intelligence official who worked as a KGB double agent before defecting to the Soviet Union in 1963.
After Labour MP Louise Haigh told the BBC her leader had been ‘interested in foreign policy issues his entire political career’, Mr Wallace tweeted: ‘Yup, so was Kim Philby.’
Mr Sarkocy worked for the state secret police at Czechoslovakia’s London embassy from 1986 to 1989 before being expelled.
A spokesman for Mr Corbyn said: ‘Jeremy neither had nor offered any privileged information to this or any other diplomat. Jan Sarkocy is a fantasist, whose claims are entirely false and becoming more absurd by the day.
‘This man, who claims to have organised Live Aid and seems to believe Jeremy was in a position to pass on information about Margaret Thatcher’s dietary and clothing habits, has no credibility whatsoever.
‘Svetlana Ptacnikova, Director of the Czech security forces archive, has said the records show Jeremy was neither an agent, asset, informer nor collaborator.’